Minessa: Showing a gentleness to the world outside is really all it takes to get started. Literally, if you're online, if you're a doom scroller who bedrots, which I do 100%, use that opportunity to just share stuff from Black creators, share stuff from brown creators, like share stuff from queer creators,
Ciara Gogan (she/her): you talked about like decolonization and you've you talked separately about sort of dismantling internal capitalism. and I'm curious about that what that means to you, how did you like why was that the thing that you were like, that's what I need to do? Like how did you even know that? Right? How did you know that that
Minessa: yeah, that's a good question. wow. How do you know that that's what you need to do?
Ciara Gogan (she/her): Right.
Minessa: wow, dude, that's such a good question. Okay, so like 'cause you're right, 'cause like I could have picked any number of things and I'd also actually done because this would have put me probably around twenty twenty-one. Now we're in twenty twenty-one. I've moved to this house. Now I've got my house on the beach. It's falling off a cliff, but it's on the beach. And I've got like I've I've had a marketing company that I was doing super well and coaching and I had hired a bunch of contractors, so like I was making multiple six figures a year. Like I was by every estimation of success, I had succeeded. And I hated my life and I hated myself and I was miserable and it just and I was like something is very, very wrong. And I had spent a couple of summers on the Eastern Pequot Tribal Nation reservation, in two thousand in the late two thousands, and Two Hawks, who was our tribal guide while we were there because we were working with the community to explore the the when the what life was like in the seventeen, eighteen hundreds. We weren't sure what the years were then, but it was that's what we were doing. And he was there. He spent a lot I actually ended up in a pit. Everybody had a pit that you'd spend like Maybe a day in and then you go to another pit and then another pit. Well, I found a trash heap that had like four hundred thousand layers of stuff. I dated the site, I found pipes, I found shells, I found coins, I found like everything. I had the jackpot. Unfortunately, that meant literally everyone left me there to go off to the other parts of the reservation to dig. And so Two Hawks would come and hang out with me because I was all by myself. And he planted many, many seeds during that time. and so did Steve Silliman, who lives in Marshfield and Amy Den Ouden. Those were three people in my formative years in my I was probably in my early thirties. I don't think I finished adolescence till I like thirty-five. and they planted those seeds and then they just kind of hung out for a bit. And then when I was here around now, I somehow shit, it was oh my God, oh my God I can't remember her name. I cannot remember her name. But she said we were talking. I met with her one of those you know, calls where you I I like we like each other. I see you online, I see you online, let's talk. So we start talking, and she tells me about this woman, Toi Marie Smith, who has this great course called Business Beyond Profit, which doesn't exist anymore. She it was $184, just stupid low price because it was worth
Ciara Gogan (she/her): Mm-hmm.
Minessa: so much more. Like it changed my whole life. And oh my God it's so good. And she now charges more for it, as she very well should, because it is life-changing. And it was basically a series of seven videos, a bunch of documents that as I read through and started to understand. chattel slavery and how the infrastructure was built, and then recognize how our industrial complex is built on top of that. And then recognize how the MLM way of doing things was exactly the same. You start I suddenly saw the pattern everywhere. And
Ciara Gogan (she/her): Mm.
Minessa: I started to feel sick. And I was like, I know why I'm upset. I know why I'm miserable and I had no idea how to get out of it. So I booked a call with her, one hour call, 90-minute call, $700. I only talked to her that one time. she runs Black Single Mothers, so I've been involved in her organization ever since and I I do a lot of work with them. But in terms of her coaching, that one session gave me everything I needed and I said, oh my God Toi, I need to shut down my business. And she was like, Yes, you do. And so I basically so I knew I needed to do that, but I had no understanding of what I was doing or how to do it or anything. I just knew that that was the problem. And I also am very good like I also like I I don't I like making money, right? I like living luxuriously. I believe in redistribution. I really I redistribute a ton of my income because I believe in it. And if I'm not making the money, I can't redistribute it, but I wasn't redistributing
Ciara Gogan (she/her): Right.
Minessa: it anyway. I was spending it on stupid shit, right? So like there were so many things that were wrong. So I basically shut everything down and went and got a job, a nine to five, and did that for a year while I kind of cocooned and I hated that job. It was s I was so abused in that job. Everybody was abused in that job. And I realized what I wanted to build. And so I then had to like, I worked with AJ, who is my decolonization coach. I did so much studying. I really worked on following different creators on Instagram. Like I it it was a year to two-year-long endeavor to turn that boat. and it's it's I make half the amount that I did before. Still a lot, just I don't who how much money do you need, right? That's like ultimately
Ciara Gogan (she/her): Right.
Minessa: what it comes down to, right? So like anything I make over what I need to live is Either for luxuries or for redistribution, right? Like and
Ciara Gogan (she/her): Mm-hmm.
Minessa: how do we how do we then? Because going back to what you said before we were talking earlier, is that I believe everybody should have the ease. If I don't have ease, I have a fluffy, comfy bed. I used to feel really bad because someone in Palestine doesn't have a fluffy, comfy bed. And like
Ciara Gogan (she/her): Yeah.
Minessa: I'm like, you know, and my decolonization coach really helped me understand this. It says my belief system is not that I should not have a comfy bed because they don't have a comfy bed. It's that I want to work on changing the systems of oppression that allow for them to have a comfy bed or whatever it is that they want. Right. At
Ciara Gogan (she/her): Right.
Minessa: the moment, they want their land back. Right. So like, but whatever it is that they want, I want them to have that. Right. Cause like,
Ciara Gogan (she/her): Yeah. Mm-hmm.
Minessa: not that, you know, like it's like, I'm gonna go help you by giving you what I think you want versus
Ciara Gogan (she/her): Right.
Minessa: what do you actually need. And so, so for me, that was part of it was recognizing that one, I deserve we all deserve joy, we all deserve ease, we all deserve love. And then okay, I deserve it. I have it. How can I now help create opportunities for other people to have it? But the way I knew it was Toi Smith from that part. But I would argue that other pieces were all because the breaking down the capitalism, racism started like a couple years before that, you know, and so each of them kind of feeds into the other because of the web in which this been created. I do think that the thing that is hardest is how overwhelming sometimes it can feel because there are so many systems of oppression working together. So what I really, really, really appreciate is the philosophy that says everybody puts the drop in the pond that they can. My drop is money. Someone else's drop is gonna be protesting. Someone else's drop is gonna be driving someone to the hospital. It doesn't matter what your drop is,
Ciara Gogan (she/her): Right.
Minessa: just have a drop.
Ciara Gogan (she/her): Absolutely. Yeah, and I think like when when the last election happened and and Trump got elected again. You know, there was obviously so many people were very upset and rightly so. And so, you know, people were like, you know, I can't do everything, da da da I'm like, you don't have to do everything, you just have to do something. And if you're out, if you're tapped out, tap out, like take a rest and then
Minessa: Uh-huh.
Ciara Gogan (she/her): come back. I make a donation every month to ACLU. I have no income right now. Like I don't have any income at the moment, but I every mu every month I still make that donation because it's important and it's what I can do. I feel like it's still what I can do right now. everybody just has to do what they can do to your point. What is that drop that you can do? You know, whether it's is it driving somebody to the the polls during election time, is it making a donation? Is it protesting? Is it, you know, supporting whatever, you know, amplifying voices online. Like I do that a lot too. You know, like whatever the thing is you
Minessa: That's huge.
Ciara Gogan (she/her): can do. You know? and and I think it's important for people to know that they don't have to do everything, that everybody has something that they can do, but not everybody can do everything.
Minessa: Cause it's important to remember who is who's benefited by if we all get exhausted by burning ourselves out. Cause if you feel make yourself feel so guilty, then you're not gonna do it because you just don't wanna engage with it, because it's like I feel
Ciara Gogan (she/her): Right.
Minessa: so guilty, I'm not doing anything. And that's the plan, right? Urgency and overwhelm is part of the toolkit of the oppressor. And so
Ciara Gogan (she/her): Right.
Minessa: we will self-police our, we will police ourselves. And so I think unlearning some of those things and like you said, doesn't have to be money. Like I love the amplifying. Literally, if you're online, if you're a doom scroller who bedrots, which I do 100%, use that opportunity to just share stuff from Black creators, share stuff from brown creators, like share stuff from queer creators, like do whatever. And you know, it doesn't have to like whatever your particular special interest is, go with that. Cause there's always gonna be someone else who
Ciara Gogan (she/her): Right. Right.
Minessa: has a different one. So I feel like that's we ha we are burdened by individualism. And we should unburden ourselves of that.
Ciara Gogan (she/her): Yeah. I think honestly that's one of the biggest problems in this country that I see. Like, yeah.
Minessa: Yeah, that was part of my colonization to myself.
Ciara Gogan (she/her): Yeah. Yeah. I mean I think about like you know, during and I'm sure I've said this on other episodes too, so I'm sorry if I'm repeating myself, but like during COVID, I feel like that individualism was like strong. You know, like and
Minessa: Yeah.
Ciara Gogan (she/her): and it's certainly in cer some areas, like, I can't get my Dunkin' Donuts or I can't get my hair done. It's like, my God, people are fucking dying. Like thousands of people are dying every day. Like there's there's always gonna be to your point, there's always different people are gonna have different things that they care about. Like for some people it's gonna be, animals in shelters and in helping that and for some people it's about kids and for some people it's about Black and brown communities and it just everybody's gonna have their thing that they wanna support and do that in whatever way that you can. But don't feel don't feel helpless because none of us are completely helpless.
Minessa: Absolutely. We're all we are all very capable. Like if we know something you mentioned with animals, like you if you if you garden and you plant local plants, right? Native plants, that's stuff
Ciara Gogan (she/her): Mm-hmm.
Minessa: that's you know, we do land acknowledgements in a lot of organizations before you start something. And one of the most important things I think about that is that if if we listen to the words, we really understand that we're talking about a relationship with our kin, right? And our kin are the plants and the bees and the birds and the and if you're taking care of them and feeding them. That's part of it too, right? Like
Ciara Gogan (she/her): Right.
Minessa: Showing a gentleness to the world outside is really all it takes to get started.
Ciara Gogan (she/her): Yeah, absolutely. And when we're talking about individualism, that's where I was going with all that rambling. The yeah.
Minessa: Yeah, yeah, no, no, no. And that's why I was thinking about it. Like, individualism can even go to like plants and animals and things like that, because we're all part of the family, right? So like there is no separation. Human supremacy is one of the things I'm trying to break down right now. So that's my goal for this year. And so when we when and I've had to my coach has like called me on this like four hundred times about my language, because I said I want to go out and be in nature. And he was like, Well, you know, aren't you in nature right now? And I'm like I mean, this is plastic. And it's like, okay, well, think about this. And this kind of blew my fucking mind. The Big Bang happens. Okay. Before the Big Bang happens, everything is one atom. Does that not mean that this is made of the same atom that I am made of?
Ciara Gogan (she/her): Hmm.
Minessa: And I'm like, AJ, I'm gonna need some time with this. Like But like I'm
Ciara Gogan (she/her): Yeah.
Minessa: really this is what I'm breaking down right now, is because individualism separates us not just from each st it's with each other now, but even before that, we're like we're different from The lower species, lower species. We're different from animals. We're different from like we keep separating ourselves and then just keep separating, keep separating, keep separating until the only people who's there at the top is Jeff Bezos. Right. And like,
Ciara Gogan (she/her): Yeah, yeah.
Minessa: and so I think that that going back to individualism, when you start going out into people, then it just opens up into animals and plants and life and air. And now
Ciara Gogan (she/her): Yeah.
Minessa: suddenly your world is so much bigger. And it's hard to feel like you're struggling or panicked or lack of power when you s feel connected to the bigger world around you. So like when I feel that way, I will go outside and I used to poo poo putting my feet on the ground. It's so dumb. I'm not doing that. Yeah, no, it turns out that that fucking works. So like
Ciara Gogan (she/her): Yeah.
Minessa: it works. You go outside, you open your eyes a little bit and it makes a really big you don't even have to think about to solve your problem. You're really just leveraging your body's chemistry to do what you want it to do.
Ciara Gogan (she/her): Right. And just the vibration of the earth and the all of the things. Yeah, yeah.
Minessa: Mm-hmm. Turns out I was wrong about everything.
Ciara Gogan (she/her): Imagine the elders actually have wisdom, like I know.
Minessa: I know, right? And this like, my god, my Daadi and Daada are just like I told you and they did, they were so patient with me. They they
Ciara Gogan (she/her): Yeah.
Minessa: even they understood that I wasn't gonna listen. They understood what was happening. They I'm really irritated. I've really I'm irritated
Ciara Gogan (she/her): But they were planting seeds that that would grow later. I mean that's the thing. And I think
Minessa: Mm-hmm. That's the thing.
Ciara Gogan (she/her): that's, you know, part of the work around like anti oppression, anti racism, anti-misogyny, anti, you know, homophobia, all those things, like and I hate to even I hate that this is true, but like we may never see the results of some of those things, the work that we're doing.
Minessa: We will not.
Ciara Gogan (she/her): I mean, we will certainly never see them solved in our lifetime, but We are planting seeds as as other people have planted seeds for us and we are reaping the benefits of those plantings. The people will reap the benefits of the seeds that are being planted today by people like you, hopefully people like me. and and like there will be benefit from it. We just may not see it. And and I think about your, you know, your grandparents like they were planting seeds that they
Minessa: Uh-huh.
Ciara Gogan (she/her): knew. They knew, like the reason they were so patient is 'cause probably because they knew that it would take, you know, twenty, thirty years for those seeds to grow, right? But they knew that if they planted them, that someday you would understand.
Minessa: that is you know, I think that going back to you said something earlier about what's wrong with this country and just the world, is that going back to individualism, we're also very much into if I won't see the benefit, why should I do it?
Ciara Gogan (she/her): Mm-hmm.
Minessa: And I think for me, what part of my switch came to I'm not doing this for me, I'm doing this for everybody that comes after me. And if we go back to the quantum reality thing, then we're all connected and so I am doing it for me, you know, it's just I may not reap the benefits in this body on this earth. Maybe I'll be somebody else, you know?
Ciara Gogan (she/her): Right?
Minessa: But I have to be honest, like, as difficult as like this whole time is, I really appreciate being able to be alive in a time where I can make change, right? And to be like you
Ciara Gogan (she/her): Mm.
Minessa: mentioned earlier that you wanted to do, you know, I could have been born at any other time in history, right? In any other place, in any other race or configuration or whatever. and maybe I have. But I feel very fortunate to be able to have an impact, you know, because if I wasn't here now, sure, somebody else would be having an impact somewhere else. But like I think for you also, because you were talking about, you know, this is this podcast is that is what it is, right? So like people will hear this and someone who is in a dark space is going to this is gonna be their light, and they'll listen to every podcast you've done, and it's going to be what helps get them through the bad days. You may never meet that person, you may never even know that that's happening. Five years from now, someone's gonna come up to you and be my God I saw your listened to your podcast. You're like, I haven't done that in years. But you will have impacted their life so much they'll never forget
Ciara Gogan (she/her): Hmm.
Minessa: you.
Ciara Gogan (she/her): Yeah, I love that. I hope so. yeah, I had an experience recently, well, it was last year actually, where somebody came up to me about something that I had done like years before,
Minessa: See?
Ciara Gogan (she/her): and I was like, I it was just so it wa I mean, it was awesome. Like it was so surprising, but it's
Minessa: It's love.
Ciara Gogan (she/her): so lovely. Yeah. And I feel like yeah, I mean I think that that's God, I hope that that's what happens, right? I hope that that's why we're here. That we're here to you know, have these conversations and that somebody will get some little something out of it, you know, as as rambly and as off off topic as I can get, right? But, you know, somebody will come back and be like, you know that thing that that really impacted me. And 'cause that happens to me, obviously it happens to all of
Minessa: Uh-huh.
Ciara Gogan (she/her): us, I think. Like we just have these experiences, that that shift us and change us in some way. Yeah.
Minessa: Absolutely. I there's so many people I actually so I'm going to see Our Lady Peace actually in I'm actually following them around. So that's that's one of the things I do to treat myself as go I I haven't ever done this. I've done this once before. with Aha and I because they when I came to the States the second time, Clumsy had just come out and I it was we only had cassettes at the time. I didn't do CDs. I never did the C D thing. I went straight from cassettes to mini discs. And then to MP3. Minidis were such shit. Like they were so bad. They
Ciara Gogan (she/her): Like what was the point of that?
Minessa: were so but they were so cute. Like I just thought they were adorable.
Ciara Gogan (she/her): They were very sweet, yes.
Minessa: God. my god, no, I forgot because I said yeah, I listened to that. I I wore it out. I think I threw it on most of my cassettes. I still have that one. So I was
Ciara Gogan (she/her): Mm.
Minessa: like, you know what? I I'm gonna go. I got a VIP passes just so I could be like, Thank you for this. And it's not, it's for me, right? It's not for them, it's for me. Because when people impact you, I like to tell them. And
Ciara Gogan (she/her): Mm-hmm.
Minessa: I'm privileged enough to be able to do it. But it's over the years, I try to tell people, and I've and actually this for you and for any of your listeners, if right now there's somebody coming to mind who at some point, maybe a friend of yours from the past, or maybe just send a message and tell them this is the thing that you did that impacted me.
Ciara Gogan (she/her): Absolutely. Yep.
Minessa: Especially somebody if you haven't thought of them in years, but like maybe you think like you think about them often, but you haven't talked to them in years because of the one lesson they taught you, like that's something that I think will have an enormous benefit because you're gonna make somebody's day better and It's something that I think no people don't do often.
Ciara Gogan (she/her): Think we're afraid, because I've started doing this as well, and I think we're afraid to be uncool or you know, too enthusiastic or whatever it might be, but it's like, God, just tell people. And like one of the things that I started doing, haven't done it enough. I've done it for a couple of people, is like, you know, when this is gonna come out all wrong, but you know, when somebody dies, right, and people are reading the obituary or they're at their funeral and they're telling stories.
Minessa: Yeah.
Ciara Gogan (she/her): Like tell the people while they're here what they mean to you. You know, don't wait
Minessa: Mm-hmm. Yes, I agree.
Ciara Gogan (she/her): until it's too late. Don't wait until they can't hear you or you don't think know that they can hear you. I'm sure that they can. But like if you have something like that that some somebody means something to you in some sort of way, even if you think they know, just tell them. Just pick up your phone, pause this, send a text, whatever. You know, just write it a little something. And I think it's like it's like the the couple of people that have done it for have been just so moved by it. It's like just do it. And don't you know, don't worry about being especially I think bless you by the way, for saying that you think that you and I are the same age. We're not, but I'm quite a bit older. But
Minessa: I said you know how old I am?
Ciara Gogan (she/her): well, didn't you say you were forty five?
Minessa: no, I'm fifty.
Ciara Gogan (she/her): there you go. You're still a lot younger than me.
Minessa: Yeah.
Ciara Gogan (she/her): Well, not a lot. Yeah, so we're in the same day. We're in the same decade. We're in the same decade. anyway, my point is, like, I think some people I certainly when we're younger, I think we're like, that's not gonna be it's not cool to do that, or they're gonna think this, they're gonna think that. For me personally, I had a hang up, and this is something that catches on me when I talk about it, so something I need to work through. But I used to have a hang up about as a queer woman telling other women how I felt about them because I was afraid that they would misconstrue it as like a romantic thing. And I don't give a shit about that anymore. Like I just don't like somebody there was a a person that we worked with years ago. Really, really sweet woman. She died r like probably two years ago now. and like she wasn't somebody that I had like, I didn't know her well. I knew her well enough to know that she was a sweet sweetheart woman and I really wish I had told her that she meant something to me that I, she was very kind, very sweet. if you needed something, was, you know, one of those people that you could always go to. and it was just she was unusual in that, you know, particular organization. And I never told her that. And went after she died, I felt really bad about it, which is sort of what started me thinking about like, I'm just gonna tell people what I think. But it also really it helped me deal in some ways with that idea, like as a as a lesbian, not telling other women how I felt about them in case they misconstrued. It's like I you know, I don't I don't worry about that anymore. And I think that there are certain things that as we get older or as we have certain experiences that sort of help us deal with those things, right?
Minessa: Mm-hmm.
Ciara Gogan (she/her): and I think part of what I want from these conversations too is to let people know if there are, you know, people that are younger listening, like Don't wait. you don't have to wait till you're, you know, forty, fifty, whatever to like to learn these lessons. Like just listen, Like we we have
Minessa: Yeah.
Ciara Gogan (she/her): we have wisdom. We do, I swear. No, and just
Minessa: I you
Ciara Gogan (she/her): like let people learn and and and undo like un unbreak some of those patterns that we a that we have, I think, that are somewhat tied to age, but don't have to be.
Minessa: I think they are tied to age actually. I feel like a lot of the younger people don't have these hangups. They actually are very, very different in terms of how they engage. I'm learning from them.
Ciara Gogan (she/her): Okay.
Minessa: I think it's mostly people who are Gen Xers, older millennials, and there's a certain age, maybe even like maybe younger millennials too. Like there might be an age aspect of it as well. But I'm finding that The younger they're and si my sister's son is actually sort of they're this generation is depressed as shit. Like they are so
Ciara Gogan (she/her): Yeah.
Minessa: depressed, like they're they are like and so it's a whole different ballgame and they're they're almost like carpe diem-ing because they feel like the world is gonna end and so they wanna do all the things that they they do. And so I'm following a lot of people who are much younger than me because they haven't had the opportunity to be conditioned into our bullshit. And so whatever it is that they're doing,
Ciara Gogan (she/her): Which is good. Yeah.
Minessa: the ones that I'm actually finding that I stick with a lot are the ones who when they talk, I can tell they haven't forgotten what they brought with them from before. Right. So whatever it is that they came wherever we come from before we're born, they haven't forgotten it yet. It's still somewhere in there. And so like, but we forget the older we get. And I think for me, my sadness is that I realize how much I've forgotten and when I 'cause I can I can trace my forgetting. And I can now
Ciara Gogan (she/her): Mm.
Minessa: I'm trying to remember, but I don't know the conduits to remember, so which is why I'm finding all these coaches to help me remember what I've forgotten. And every time I do that I think of Spock. Remember. That's not how you do a mind meld. But But I think that to your point, I want to come back to what you said about, my wife and I are in an ethically non-monogamous relationship. I don't date, but she
Ciara Gogan (she/her): Mm-hmm.
Minessa: dates a lot. And but the challenge is I'm very enthusiastic. I love you, you're amazing. And my flow coach, I remember so vividly, I saw him at Nocturnal in Providence and I walked up to I like he's this ball of energy. I posted about him before, and I'm like, you're amazing, and I just adore you, and so on. And him and I've talked a lot since then. And I s I asked him, I said to him, I said, you know, I was like, I was worried when I came up to you because I was because he was playing with light and it was having an enormous impact on me psychologically, and we've done a lot of work together since then. So like he's able to like f fuck with my brain using his light gloves, which is just very, very cool. And it helps me. It's actually very therapeutic. Like we actually like played around with a lot of fun stuff. So when I say that you can do anything, you really can do anything. You can get a guy At a club to do a light show in your eyes and it will make a difference in various ways. And so we talked about it and I I started saying in circles, I said, it doesn't matter how enthusiastic I am about you, I'm not hitting on you. Doesn't matter if you ever think I'm hitting on you, you're you're you're wrong. And what's funny though is that him and I talked and him and we're both autistic at ADHD, and he was just like, he's like, no, he's like your vibe just didn't seem he's like, people will usually come at you a certain way.
Ciara Gogan (she/her): Yeah.
Minessa: Right. And he's like, you just you weren't asking the questions that somebody asks when like because I was like the thing I didn't want was for you to think I was hitting on you because I really wanted you to teach me. Right. And so like I was like, I can't deal with this conversation that we're gonna have if you think I'm hitting on you. And I was like, but I have to talk to him because I need this guy to teach me. And I had a giant life-changing experience because of that, because of what I learned. And so to your point, like think about how you doing that has changed your life. Right now you have the bravery to do that, you change other people's lives. Because you're messaging them. And so I think for people like us who are older who we've been conditioned into every single thing that you do is wrong. Every you have to second guess every single thing you do. That's
Ciara Gogan (she/her): true. Yeah.
Minessa: that's the thing we have to let go of, right? Is that not everything we do is wrong. And just because somebody says something is uncool doesn't make it uncool. Right? Like I'm I'm 50 years old. Like I decide what cool is for me at this point. I'm gonna be dead in 30 years. Like I decide what's
Ciara Gogan (she/her): Right.
Minessa: cool for me, you know? And so, But it's very difficult to let go of that because if we do, so let's say you do that and I'm like, God, Ciara you're such a loser, right? Now you've been rejected by the community. What does that mean? That means you're going to be abandoned. You have no money, no home, we go to homeless. Right. And so it's such a deep, deep-seated fear of rejection. And our society has cultivated that and we perpetuate it constantly. And so I think it's helpful to find people that you feel safe with so that you feel safe going to people who aren't like You could message that rando, not knowing how they're gonna respond, but you feel safe doing it because you have this group here that's your core group of people, and they're the ones you care about. They're I don't care what that guy thinks of me, right? But that's such a hard thing to get to because before I cared about what everybody thought of me. It didn't matter who you were met you five minutes ago and you hate me. My life is devastated. I cannot believe that, right? I'm like, you don't
Ciara Gogan (she/her): Right I know it was wrong with us, but but like sure. Yeah.
Minessa: even know me, but you hate me. You're also a horrible racist, but you hate me, right? Like There was a time where I wanted acceptance even from that. And and so now where I'm at is I'm able to be more discerning about who I w like, it's okay for you to hate me if you're a racist. Like I'm okay with this. Please, please hate me. I'm brown, if that helps.
Ciara Gogan (she/her): Right. Yeah, please please please hate me if you're a racist. Like yeah. Yeah, exactly. God. So I wanted to talk a little bit about creativity, right? 'Cause I know that you've talked about, in in different circles that you're, you know, creative person. So I used to think of myself as very much not creative. Like decidedly not creative. When I was in school, I did art. I wasn't terrible at it. I was alright, actually pretty good in some areas. But my sisters were so much better. So of course then I like, oh my God like I'm not gonna do that 'cause they're better than that. If I can't be the best, I'm not gonna do it. Hang-ups, therapy. but but anyway, so I took down like went down a scientific track. But I, you know, I conflated in my mind artistic with creative. Like so, and so I think cre creativity is so much bigger than than artistic. and I I'm sort of coming around on that and recently, you know, allowing myself to think of myself as actually maybe I am artistic, I have some artistic leanings. somebody an artist that I admire greatly, recently had said to me that you you know, yes, you are an artist. I'm like, okay, so I'm still not over that yet. Anyway. but you can you tell me about like how creativity shows up in your life and what it teaches you?
Minessa: First, I want to tell you that everything you described about your history with art and creativity is my experience with art and creativity.
Ciara Gogan (she/her): Hmm.
Minessa: So I used to say I have the soul of an artist, but none of the talent.
Ciara Gogan (she/her): Yeah.
Minessa: And so you are an artist. Like, so that's it's you get to claim your identity. And I think where the weirdly where I got that from was I never thought I was brown or white enough, and I was looking for someone else to validate my brownness.
Ciara Gogan (she/her): Mm.
Minessa: and I but at a certain point I stopped caring about the whiteness, and I was like, But and that's actually part of my decolonization work is to bring my whiteness back in, because not whiteness in terms of like whiteness, but in terms of my Irish ancestry, my Scottish ancestry, that kind of thing, right?
Ciara Gogan (she/her): Mm-hmm. Yeah.
Minessa: So, but the stories you tell, whatever story you tell, that's the truth. It literally doesn't matter what story you tell. So you are an artist. and I so cre I did so I didn't think I had creativity, I didn't think I had much talent. My self-esteem has been very poor for a very, very long time.
Ciara Gogan (she/her): Hmm.
Minessa: where like all of this kind of stops in twenty eighteen because that's sort of when the journey of healing began. So like it's so anything I say is sort of like what I claimed as my identity for many, many, many, many years. I think that the reason why I didn't like to claim that, so the first thing where it showed up was creativity in acceptance, right? So like I had to accept that It was possible for me to be creative, for me to have value, for me to have worth. And I had such feelings of worthlessness that if I was able to create art, then that's valuable. And it fights with my idea that I'm not valuable. Right. And
Ciara Gogan (she/her): Mm.
Minessa: so, like, there's a lot of cognitive dissonance that goes in that. So, like, for me, if you were to say that my podcast that I created was creative, I wouldn't say that at all at the time. I would just say, it's just a podcast. I just made videos to help people, right? Okay. Then that's you're right. You are not creative because that's what I said, right? And it's like, so I don't believe it, so it's not. It's only over the last few years, like I really like this difference between artistic and creative. I'm gonna journal on this because I've never thought of it that way. So I'm I'm actually trying to be more mindful about how I use each of the words now because I I never thought of it that way before. And I am a creative problem solver. So
Ciara Gogan (she/her): Mm-hmm. Time.
Minessa: I the way that it shows up for me is that. I was a coach for a while where I was a marketing coach. And the more people that came to me, the more I realized that marketing was too small for me. And then I felt like I had to learn everything and teach everybody everything. And then I baaa and then I was like, okay, we gotta this is rethink everything, right? Because that story you tell where you gotta do all the things because I can't send them to someone. It was whole I was so bought into all the bullshit. And then and then it's fine. Dude, laugh at it. This is like you
Ciara Gogan (she/her): I'm laughing because same. By way, I'm not laughing at you, I'm laughing because it's like I'm the exact same way. Okay. Right.
Minessa: We're all that way. Like it's and I have to be able to laugh at it. Cause like otherwise, like there's judgment, there's other things. It's it comes from a place of love with myself, right? Like I get it, you know, here, I love you, Minessa. You're adorable. Let me pat your head, but no. So so then I realized that's when the podcast started, right? So now I start doing the podcast. And I realized that. If I'm a research administrator solving crises for these big organizations that have giant research portfolios navigating complicated policies, guidelines, also personalities, varying levels of authority and screaming and yelling, you know, how much they like to scream and yell, and also companies that are trying to exist solely on research grants and helping them stay out of NIH jail and helping to, you know, all of those things require the ability to be extremely mentally dexterous. And and so for me, I think getting some more neuroplasticity helped a lot. So that showed that so once I started to realize that I was doing this even though I wasn't drawing, and if anybody's seen my art, my art's really fucking good. It is so good. It's adorable, it's bright, it's colorful, it'll make you laugh. I love my art, but it's only in the last two to three years. So I got myself an iPad. And I realized that that made it easier for me to draw because it kind of allowed me to work within the way I work. I used to use Photoshop before and I was able to do a limited amount. So I really, really love Procreate. I love drawing. I found that I don't I'm not currently making time for it because something in the last few weeks I've realized is that going back to capitalism. So even though I know all these things, this is actually super important. Even though I know these things, I backslide. We all will backslide because the systems exist. So in the
Ciara Gogan (she/her): Yeah.
Minessa: about three weeks ago I realized I was feeling like so wound up, like so. And I I ended up having to recognize that the reason why I was was because I was making choices to continue to work long after the hour that I was done. I was making choices to put my attention in certain places, and that was training my mind to think that that was what was important. And so
Ciara Gogan (she/her): Yeah.
Minessa: I've had to really work on that in the last couple of weeks and take the like so I'm working on that right now. So it shows up in that it helps me. So going back to like processing without a therapist, art is an enormously helpful processing. I hate cooking, so I don't bring creativity to the kitchen at all. But my house
Ciara Gogan (she/her): Mm-hmm.
Minessa: is like it looks like a color bomb dropped all over it and a chotchki store, right? And like so it shows up in many different areas of
Ciara Gogan (she/her): Yeah.
Minessa: the plants outside. But I think it's a matter of being okay with following the thread and not trying to be right is what's important to be creative. Because if you're like, I have to do this right, I have to draw this eye correctly, I have to do it this way,
Ciara Gogan (she/her): Right.
Minessa: then you're gonna you're there's no creativity that can happen. Creativity, you have to give yourself the freedom to disconnect from the idea of right and wrong. Right?
Ciara Gogan (she/her): Yeah. Yeah.
Minessa: And it don't mean you go murder people to be creative, like don't do that, right? Don't
Ciara Gogan (she/her): Right. No, no, I know what you mean though. Like it it like don't go for precision, don't go for exact, like just flow and just enjoy the process.
Minessa: And Don't create it for an audience that doesn't exist, right? Because like sometimes I'm writing and I'm imagining the person reading it and they're saying horrible things. I'm writing or drawing and I'm drawing it and I'm imagining the person who's looking at God, that's so stupid. You think that's pink, right? It's like there
Ciara Gogan (she/her): yeah.
Minessa: is no one here, right? And so don't
Ciara Gogan (she/her): Right.
Minessa: tell that person to go the go the fuck away. Don't be mean to that person because that person is a child within you who is hurting and who is used to being rejected. So the way to handle that is to say, I think people will really love it. And why don't we play together a little bit? And then we can put it away and we don't have to show it to anybody. Show gentleness. I talk about this in a lot of my podcasts. Is when you start showing gentleness in those moments, you will actually find that it's easier to move through. Like if you brace, oh God, have you ever had a really deep massage, like a super deep massage? If
Ciara Gogan (she/her): Mm.
Minessa: you breathe into it and loosen up, they're gonna be able to get
Ciara Gogan (she/her): Yeah.
Minessa: so deep. But if you tighten, they're
Ciara Gogan (she/her): Right.
Minessa: only gonna get so far. So you actually have to lean into it, which is very uncomfortable because we are conditioned as a society to Avoid discomfort at all costs.
Ciara Gogan (she/her): Mm-hmm. True. True, true, true. what lessons do you think you're still learning? I know you've touched on this a little bit, but is there anything
Minessa: Jesus.
Ciara Gogan (she/her): like that you didn't like touch on that you think is still
Minessa: Okay. This is the lesson. This is the lesson I'm learning. I learn it every day. I don't think I'll ever stop learning this lesson. This is a true lesson for all of us. Everything is okay. You have everything you need. You have everything you need. And you'll be able to find what you'll be able to get directed to what you don't need. be careful what you say out loud, because the words
Ciara Gogan (she/her): Yeah.
Minessa: you say out loud are literal spells. Like this is gonna break your brain, but we are living in a world of magic. You
Ciara Gogan (she/her): Mm-hmm.
Minessa: can make anything you want happen, but you have to say the words and you have to be specific and you have to say it a lot until you believe it. It is the science behind affirmations. There's a lot of stuff that goes there's a lot of like quantum shit that I've been and this is just like this is my theory, my I'm a baby in this, but I've seen it work enough and I've
Ciara Gogan (she/her): Yeah.
Minessa: seen enough things to be like, all right, I'm with you on this, and until I can like until I see it not work. And I think that that's one of the things that's helped me to get through all of the traumas, everything when you're struggling, when you're dealing with it, is the the knowledge that people love you. You're okay. You will be okay. Eventually, and I know this isn't gonna make anybody feel better, but eventually we're all gonna die. Like that's it. We're just all gonna die. And if you but nobody really believes that. But if you really think that eventually you're all gonna die, does it really matter what that guy you passed on the street thinks of you? Right? Like, does it and like it really and I don't think it's really hard to do? So that's the lesson that I'm doing every day because we are by our conditioning connected to the meat suit. We are by conditioning. And like by nature, like there's nothing we can really do about it. That is the journey, right? And so recognizing that we can both exist in a plane where we have this bigger space that everything is gonna be okay. When you're dead, literally everything's gonna be okay, right?
Ciara Gogan (she/her): Right.
Minessa: But we can have the power to craft the life we want now. There are people who are held back by systems of oppression. And like, and for
Ciara Gogan (she/her): Absolutely.
Minessa: those, and I think it's important to recognize where you have privilege and where you don't, and the creativity of problem solving in that space. Is what allows you to find your way out. That's how and and people like me, not just me, many people are working with organizations and institutions to help create pathways and tributaries. So the more you say what you want out loud, the more the universe knows what to send you. And it may not be from me, but you'll hear it eventually, maybe in six months, maybe in seven months. And that's the person who's gonna change your life. But if you don't say it out loud and you're not clear, Then the universe doesn't know what to send you. Or if you say things like, I'm not this or I'm not that, the universe isn't gonna send you that because it's not that's not what's real.
Ciara Gogan (she/her): Right. Like when I said I have no income right now, you were like fucking shut up. Don't say that. I saw it. I saw it in your face. You didn't say anything, but I saw it in your face, you're like
Minessa: I was like, don't don't say that. Don't say
Ciara Gogan (she/her): Do that.
Minessa: Well, you're so what you want to say is I have income coming. I have seeds
Ciara Gogan (she/her): Right.
Minessa: planted. I and I think I have and or you could like there are ways to say it, because currently you're right. Right now you don't have income coming in. So like it takes a while
Ciara Gogan (she/her): Yeah. Right, right, right. But yes.
Minessa: to figure out what the true statement is for you
Ciara Gogan (she/her): Yeah.
Minessa: that'll allow you to both acknowledge your current state, but also create the future state.
Ciara Gogan (she/her): Right. Yeah.
Minessa: That you want, right? And I don't know what is for you. Like it's hard. Sometimes I work with Chat GPT on it, because I don't
Ciara Gogan (she/her): Yeah.
Minessa: want to say the wrong thing out loud. My sister and I have made really big fucking mistakes saying the wrong thing out loud. We ended up having we there was this one guy. We were both madly in love with him. He was so hot. And his name was Silas. And we both said we wish Silas liked us and we just wanted him
Ciara Gogan (she/her): Mm.
Minessa: to be friends with us. That's not what happened. He fell in love with my sister. She fell in love with him. Our relationship completely broke apart when we were in college. Like it was a
Ciara Gogan (she/her): Yeah.
Minessa: whole drama. And you know why? Because we were not fucking specific.
Ciara Gogan (she/her): Yeah.
Minessa: I learned that lesson when I was twenty three years old. Silas. That was a that
Ciara Gogan (she/her): right? No, I know. I gotta fig dah I know.
Minessa: was we that was Saira and I still talk about that.
Ciara Gogan (she/her): That's hilarious. So I just wanted to actually quickly, 'cause you said, you know, that in twenty eighteen, like, you broke up, you left the cult and you broke up with your sister, but you're you're back in relation with your sister now. Like, yeah.
Minessa: Yeah, yeah, absolutely. So the the yes. So I was afraid, but but we had to grow separately. she and I were both in extremely dark places, and what had happened was, and I recognized it was happening, which is why she broke up with that's funny to say that, but she broke up with me, but I was the one that was recognized it was happening. And what was happening was that we were feeding into each other and now just constantly we were creating a deeper and deeper well of trauma, and it was we were not helping each other. And so I we separated and then she and then it took a while, like it's two to three years for us to kind of one year for one year we just didn't even talk. You know, that was a time where we actually a couple of years later we then discovered a giant trauma of like a whole lot of stuff about my dad that was like awful. And it made our relationship, but it allowed us to then break through our codependence issues and really talk about the brass tacks because now once my dad was cut off. we were able to talk about everything more really in our whole lives. Whereas before she and my brother were still hanging out with my dad and I was like kind of done. So like
Ciara Gogan (she/her): Yeah, yeah.
Minessa: we had to grow in separate spaces. And the reason why that's important is because we tend to think of things as breakups or things like that as permanent. We don't realize that like very important people can come in and out of your life. And like my aunt, for example, we haven't talked in many, many years, but when I go see Our Lady Peace, I'm staying with her because our relationship is rekindling and she's one of the most important people in my life. But we were in a time, a season where we needed to be separate. It is not You said something about this earlier. It's not a bad thing for a relationship to either run its course or for a relationship to have seasons. And again, in our society, I feel like I'm dri I'm I'm railing on our society a lot, but it just goes to show you how many things that are really conditioning us. That if you become friends with someone, it has to be friends forever, or else you failed. If you get married, you have to be married forever, or else you failed. Like There is only forever or failing. And if you put yourself in that binary, you will feel like a failure all the time because that's not
Ciara Gogan (she/her): Yep. All the time. Yeah.
Minessa: how life works. Right. And so, like,
Ciara Gogan (she/her): Absolutely.
Minessa: how are we creating our own struggles with our expectations and our belief systems? And you can free yourself, and I can free my, we all can, by simply challenging the rule in the first place. Like, why is that even a rule? Why is that even a
Ciara Gogan (she/her): Yeah.
Minessa: thing? So if someone says don't wear that, be like, why not? Why is that a rule? I love that, it's my favorite thing.
Ciara Gogan (she/her): I love that. I think that's an awesome place to end because time and you have to go and Yeah.
Minessa: Time. This is so fun and I like I really appr I appreciate your grace and I really love this conversation. Like I learned so much today. I'm gonna be journaling about this and marinating. This you're a great host. Like really you are a
Ciara Gogan (she/her): Good. Awesome. Thank you.
Minessa: much better host than I ever was. Like you're really good. I you're gonna do well with Yeah.
Ciara Gogan (she/her): Thank you. I appreciate that. Tell tell everybody. No, I appreciate that. thank you for being here. I really, really, really appreciate your time and your all of your thoughts and your wisdoms and all of the things. I really can't wait for people to start to hear this conversation.
Minessa: That was a great card. I'm really excited. Thank you so much. It was it was so much fun. And I am really like, I can't wait to tell other people about your podcast. Like, it's this is like this is great. So and also thank you because like you're you said something you can you you said a couple times. I just want to give this to as like a friend. you said I hope so.
Ciara Gogan (she/her): Mm-hmm.
Minessa: You are. I want to invite you to change the language to I am doing that because you just in the and I and how I can prove that is because it just happened. Like right on this call, you had a giant impact on me, I have a lot of things that I need that I'm gonna be thinking about that will inform me as the days and years go ahead. And so even if it's just me, which I know it's not, but even if it's just me, you are now you can use that. So 'cause I want you to believe it and like it 'cause it's true. Awesome. Thank you so much. I will I'm looking forward to it.
Ciara Gogan (she/her): Thank you. Awesome. Thanks, Minessa.
Ciara Gogan (she/her): you talked about like decolonization and you've you talked separately about sort of dismantling internal capitalism. and I'm curious about that what that means to you, how did you like why was that the thing that you were like, that's what I need to do? Like how did you even know that? Right? How did you know that that
Minessa: yeah, that's a good question. wow. How do you know that that's what you need to do?
Ciara Gogan (she/her): Right.
Minessa: wow, dude, that's such a good question. Okay, so like 'cause you're right, 'cause like I could have picked any number of things and I'd also actually done because this would have put me probably around twenty twenty-one. Now we're in twenty twenty-one. I've moved to this house. Now I've got my house on the beach. It's falling off a cliff, but it's on the beach. And I've got like I've I've had a marketing company that I was doing super well and coaching and I had hired a bunch of contractors, so like I was making multiple six figures a year. Like I was by every estimation of success, I had succeeded. And I hated my life and I hated myself and I was miserable and it just and I was like something is very, very wrong. And I had spent a couple of summers on the Eastern Pequot Tribal Nation reservation, in two thousand in the late two thousands, and Two Hawks, who was our tribal guide while we were there because we were working with the community to explore the the when the what life was like in the seventeen, eighteen hundreds. We weren't sure what the years were then, but it was that's what we were doing. And he was there. He spent a lot I actually ended up in a pit. Everybody had a pit that you'd spend like Maybe a day in and then you go to another pit and then another pit. Well, I found a trash heap that had like four hundred thousand layers of stuff. I dated the site, I found pipes, I found shells, I found coins, I found like everything. I had the jackpot. Unfortunately, that meant literally everyone left me there to go off to the other parts of the reservation to dig. And so Two Hawks would come and hang out with me because I was all by myself. And he planted many, many seeds during that time. and so did Steve Silliman, who lives in Marshfield and Amy Den Ouden. Those were three people in my formative years in my I was probably in my early thirties. I don't think I finished adolescence till I like thirty-five. and they planted those seeds and then they just kind of hung out for a bit. And then when I was here around now, I somehow shit, it was oh my God, oh my God I can't remember her name. I cannot remember her name. But she said we were talking. I met with her one of those you know, calls where you I I like we like each other. I see you online, I see you online, let's talk. So we start talking, and she tells me about this woman, Toi Marie Smith, who has this great course called Business Beyond Profit, which doesn't exist anymore. She it was $184, just stupid low price because it was worth
Ciara Gogan (she/her): Mm-hmm.
Minessa: so much more. Like it changed my whole life. And oh my God it's so good. And she now charges more for it, as she very well should, because it is life-changing. And it was basically a series of seven videos, a bunch of documents that as I read through and started to understand. chattel slavery and how the infrastructure was built, and then recognize how our industrial complex is built on top of that. And then recognize how the MLM way of doing things was exactly the same. You start I suddenly saw the pattern everywhere. And
Ciara Gogan (she/her): Mm.
Minessa: I started to feel sick. And I was like, I know why I'm upset. I know why I'm miserable and I had no idea how to get out of it. So I booked a call with her, one hour call, 90-minute call, $700. I only talked to her that one time. she runs Black Single Mothers, so I've been involved in her organization ever since and I I do a lot of work with them. But in terms of her coaching, that one session gave me everything I needed and I said, oh my God Toi, I need to shut down my business. And she was like, Yes, you do. And so I basically so I knew I needed to do that, but I had no understanding of what I was doing or how to do it or anything. I just knew that that was the problem. And I also am very good like I also like I I don't I like making money, right? I like living luxuriously. I believe in redistribution. I really I redistribute a ton of my income because I believe in it. And if I'm not making the money, I can't redistribute it, but I wasn't redistributing
Ciara Gogan (she/her): Right.
Minessa: it anyway. I was spending it on stupid shit, right? So like there were so many things that were wrong. So I basically shut everything down and went and got a job, a nine to five, and did that for a year while I kind of cocooned and I hated that job. It was s I was so abused in that job. Everybody was abused in that job. And I realized what I wanted to build. And so I then had to like, I worked with AJ, who is my decolonization coach. I did so much studying. I really worked on following different creators on Instagram. Like I it it was a year to two-year-long endeavor to turn that boat. and it's it's I make half the amount that I did before. Still a lot, just I don't who how much money do you need, right? That's like ultimately
Ciara Gogan (she/her): Right.
Minessa: what it comes down to, right? So like anything I make over what I need to live is Either for luxuries or for redistribution, right? Like and
Ciara Gogan (she/her): Mm-hmm.
Minessa: how do we how do we then? Because going back to what you said before we were talking earlier, is that I believe everybody should have the ease. If I don't have ease, I have a fluffy, comfy bed. I used to feel really bad because someone in Palestine doesn't have a fluffy, comfy bed. And like
Ciara Gogan (she/her): Yeah.
Minessa: I'm like, you know, and my decolonization coach really helped me understand this. It says my belief system is not that I should not have a comfy bed because they don't have a comfy bed. It's that I want to work on changing the systems of oppression that allow for them to have a comfy bed or whatever it is that they want. Right. At
Ciara Gogan (she/her): Right.
Minessa: the moment, they want their land back. Right. So like, but whatever it is that they want, I want them to have that. Right. Cause like,
Ciara Gogan (she/her): Yeah. Mm-hmm.
Minessa: not that, you know, like it's like, I'm gonna go help you by giving you what I think you want versus
Ciara Gogan (she/her): Right.
Minessa: what do you actually need. And so, so for me, that was part of it was recognizing that one, I deserve we all deserve joy, we all deserve ease, we all deserve love. And then okay, I deserve it. I have it. How can I now help create opportunities for other people to have it? But the way I knew it was Toi Smith from that part. But I would argue that other pieces were all because the breaking down the capitalism, racism started like a couple years before that, you know, and so each of them kind of feeds into the other because of the web in which this been created. I do think that the thing that is hardest is how overwhelming sometimes it can feel because there are so many systems of oppression working together. So what I really, really, really appreciate is the philosophy that says everybody puts the drop in the pond that they can. My drop is money. Someone else's drop is gonna be protesting. Someone else's drop is gonna be driving someone to the hospital. It doesn't matter what your drop is,
Ciara Gogan (she/her): Right.
Minessa: just have a drop.
Ciara Gogan (she/her): Absolutely. Yeah, and I think like when when the last election happened and and Trump got elected again. You know, there was obviously so many people were very upset and rightly so. And so, you know, people were like, you know, I can't do everything, da da da I'm like, you don't have to do everything, you just have to do something. And if you're out, if you're tapped out, tap out, like take a rest and then
Minessa: Uh-huh.
Ciara Gogan (she/her): come back. I make a donation every month to ACLU. I have no income right now. Like I don't have any income at the moment, but I every mu every month I still make that donation because it's important and it's what I can do. I feel like it's still what I can do right now. everybody just has to do what they can do to your point. What is that drop that you can do? You know, whether it's is it driving somebody to the the polls during election time, is it making a donation? Is it protesting? Is it, you know, supporting whatever, you know, amplifying voices online. Like I do that a lot too. You know, like whatever the thing is you
Minessa: That's huge.
Ciara Gogan (she/her): can do. You know? and and I think it's important for people to know that they don't have to do everything, that everybody has something that they can do, but not everybody can do everything.
Minessa: Cause it's important to remember who is who's benefited by if we all get exhausted by burning ourselves out. Cause if you feel make yourself feel so guilty, then you're not gonna do it because you just don't wanna engage with it, because it's like I feel
Ciara Gogan (she/her): Right.
Minessa: so guilty, I'm not doing anything. And that's the plan, right? Urgency and overwhelm is part of the toolkit of the oppressor. And so
Ciara Gogan (she/her): Right.
Minessa: we will self-police our, we will police ourselves. And so I think unlearning some of those things and like you said, doesn't have to be money. Like I love the amplifying. Literally, if you're online, if you're a doom scroller who bedrots, which I do 100%, use that opportunity to just share stuff from Black creators, share stuff from brown creators, like share stuff from queer creators, like do whatever. And you know, it doesn't have to like whatever your particular special interest is, go with that. Cause there's always gonna be someone else who
Ciara Gogan (she/her): Right. Right.
Minessa: has a different one. So I feel like that's we ha we are burdened by individualism. And we should unburden ourselves of that.
Ciara Gogan (she/her): Yeah. I think honestly that's one of the biggest problems in this country that I see. Like, yeah.
Minessa: Yeah, that was part of my colonization to myself.
Ciara Gogan (she/her): Yeah. Yeah. I mean I think about like you know, during and I'm sure I've said this on other episodes too, so I'm sorry if I'm repeating myself, but like during COVID, I feel like that individualism was like strong. You know, like and
Minessa: Yeah.
Ciara Gogan (she/her): and it's certainly in cer some areas, like, I can't get my Dunkin' Donuts or I can't get my hair done. It's like, my God, people are fucking dying. Like thousands of people are dying every day. Like there's there's always gonna be to your point, there's always different people are gonna have different things that they care about. Like for some people it's gonna be, animals in shelters and in helping that and for some people it's about kids and for some people it's about Black and brown communities and it just everybody's gonna have their thing that they wanna support and do that in whatever way that you can. But don't feel don't feel helpless because none of us are completely helpless.
Minessa: Absolutely. We're all we are all very capable. Like if we know something you mentioned with animals, like you if you if you garden and you plant local plants, right? Native plants, that's stuff
Ciara Gogan (she/her): Mm-hmm.
Minessa: that's you know, we do land acknowledgements in a lot of organizations before you start something. And one of the most important things I think about that is that if if we listen to the words, we really understand that we're talking about a relationship with our kin, right? And our kin are the plants and the bees and the birds and the and if you're taking care of them and feeding them. That's part of it too, right? Like
Ciara Gogan (she/her): Right.
Minessa: Showing a gentleness to the world outside is really all it takes to get started.
Ciara Gogan (she/her): Yeah, absolutely. And when we're talking about individualism, that's where I was going with all that rambling. The yeah.
Minessa: Yeah, yeah, no, no, no. And that's why I was thinking about it. Like, individualism can even go to like plants and animals and things like that, because we're all part of the family, right? So like there is no separation. Human supremacy is one of the things I'm trying to break down right now. So that's my goal for this year. And so when we when and I've had to my coach has like called me on this like four hundred times about my language, because I said I want to go out and be in nature. And he was like, Well, you know, aren't you in nature right now? And I'm like I mean, this is plastic. And it's like, okay, well, think about this. And this kind of blew my fucking mind. The Big Bang happens. Okay. Before the Big Bang happens, everything is one atom. Does that not mean that this is made of the same atom that I am made of?
Ciara Gogan (she/her): Hmm.
Minessa: And I'm like, AJ, I'm gonna need some time with this. Like But like I'm
Ciara Gogan (she/her): Yeah.
Minessa: really this is what I'm breaking down right now, is because individualism separates us not just from each st it's with each other now, but even before that, we're like we're different from The lower species, lower species. We're different from animals. We're different from like we keep separating ourselves and then just keep separating, keep separating, keep separating until the only people who's there at the top is Jeff Bezos. Right. And like,
Ciara Gogan (she/her): Yeah, yeah.
Minessa: and so I think that that going back to individualism, when you start going out into people, then it just opens up into animals and plants and life and air. And now
Ciara Gogan (she/her): Yeah.
Minessa: suddenly your world is so much bigger. And it's hard to feel like you're struggling or panicked or lack of power when you s feel connected to the bigger world around you. So like when I feel that way, I will go outside and I used to poo poo putting my feet on the ground. It's so dumb. I'm not doing that. Yeah, no, it turns out that that fucking works. So like
Ciara Gogan (she/her): Yeah.
Minessa: it works. You go outside, you open your eyes a little bit and it makes a really big you don't even have to think about to solve your problem. You're really just leveraging your body's chemistry to do what you want it to do.
Ciara Gogan (she/her): Right. And just the vibration of the earth and the all of the things. Yeah, yeah.
Minessa: Mm-hmm. Turns out I was wrong about everything.
Ciara Gogan (she/her): Imagine the elders actually have wisdom, like I know.
Minessa: I know, right? And this like, my god, my Daadi and Daada are just like I told you and they did, they were so patient with me. They they
Ciara Gogan (she/her): Yeah.
Minessa: even they understood that I wasn't gonna listen. They understood what was happening. They I'm really irritated. I've really I'm irritated
Ciara Gogan (she/her): But they were planting seeds that that would grow later. I mean that's the thing. And I think
Minessa: Mm-hmm. That's the thing.
Ciara Gogan (she/her): that's, you know, part of the work around like anti oppression, anti racism, anti-misogyny, anti, you know, homophobia, all those things, like and I hate to even I hate that this is true, but like we may never see the results of some of those things, the work that we're doing.
Minessa: We will not.
Ciara Gogan (she/her): I mean, we will certainly never see them solved in our lifetime, but We are planting seeds as as other people have planted seeds for us and we are reaping the benefits of those plantings. The people will reap the benefits of the seeds that are being planted today by people like you, hopefully people like me. and and like there will be benefit from it. We just may not see it. And and I think about your, you know, your grandparents like they were planting seeds that they
Minessa: Uh-huh.
Ciara Gogan (she/her): knew. They knew, like the reason they were so patient is 'cause probably because they knew that it would take, you know, twenty, thirty years for those seeds to grow, right? But they knew that if they planted them, that someday you would understand.
Minessa: that is you know, I think that going back to you said something earlier about what's wrong with this country and just the world, is that going back to individualism, we're also very much into if I won't see the benefit, why should I do it?
Ciara Gogan (she/her): Mm-hmm.
Minessa: And I think for me, what part of my switch came to I'm not doing this for me, I'm doing this for everybody that comes after me. And if we go back to the quantum reality thing, then we're all connected and so I am doing it for me, you know, it's just I may not reap the benefits in this body on this earth. Maybe I'll be somebody else, you know?
Ciara Gogan (she/her): Right?
Minessa: But I have to be honest, like, as difficult as like this whole time is, I really appreciate being able to be alive in a time where I can make change, right? And to be like you
Ciara Gogan (she/her): Mm.
Minessa: mentioned earlier that you wanted to do, you know, I could have been born at any other time in history, right? In any other place, in any other race or configuration or whatever. and maybe I have. But I feel very fortunate to be able to have an impact, you know, because if I wasn't here now, sure, somebody else would be having an impact somewhere else. But like I think for you also, because you were talking about, you know, this is this podcast is that is what it is, right? So like people will hear this and someone who is in a dark space is going to this is gonna be their light, and they'll listen to every podcast you've done, and it's going to be what helps get them through the bad days. You may never meet that person, you may never even know that that's happening. Five years from now, someone's gonna come up to you and be my God I saw your listened to your podcast. You're like, I haven't done that in years. But you will have impacted their life so much they'll never forget
Ciara Gogan (she/her): Hmm.
Minessa: you.
Ciara Gogan (she/her): Yeah, I love that. I hope so. yeah, I had an experience recently, well, it was last year actually, where somebody came up to me about something that I had done like years before,
Minessa: See?
Ciara Gogan (she/her): and I was like, I it was just so it wa I mean, it was awesome. Like it was so surprising, but it's
Minessa: It's love.
Ciara Gogan (she/her): so lovely. Yeah. And I feel like yeah, I mean I think that that's God, I hope that that's what happens, right? I hope that that's why we're here. That we're here to you know, have these conversations and that somebody will get some little something out of it, you know, as as rambly and as off off topic as I can get, right? But, you know, somebody will come back and be like, you know that thing that that really impacted me. And 'cause that happens to me, obviously it happens to all of
Minessa: Uh-huh.
Ciara Gogan (she/her): us, I think. Like we just have these experiences, that that shift us and change us in some way. Yeah.
Minessa: Absolutely. I there's so many people I actually so I'm going to see Our Lady Peace actually in I'm actually following them around. So that's that's one of the things I do to treat myself as go I I haven't ever done this. I've done this once before. with Aha and I because they when I came to the States the second time, Clumsy had just come out and I it was we only had cassettes at the time. I didn't do CDs. I never did the C D thing. I went straight from cassettes to mini discs. And then to MP3. Minidis were such shit. Like they were so bad. They
Ciara Gogan (she/her): Like what was the point of that?
Minessa: were so but they were so cute. Like I just thought they were adorable.
Ciara Gogan (she/her): They were very sweet, yes.
Minessa: God. my god, no, I forgot because I said yeah, I listened to that. I I wore it out. I think I threw it on most of my cassettes. I still have that one. So I was
Ciara Gogan (she/her): Mm.
Minessa: like, you know what? I I'm gonna go. I got a VIP passes just so I could be like, Thank you for this. And it's not, it's for me, right? It's not for them, it's for me. Because when people impact you, I like to tell them. And
Ciara Gogan (she/her): Mm-hmm.
Minessa: I'm privileged enough to be able to do it. But it's over the years, I try to tell people, and I've and actually this for you and for any of your listeners, if right now there's somebody coming to mind who at some point, maybe a friend of yours from the past, or maybe just send a message and tell them this is the thing that you did that impacted me.
Ciara Gogan (she/her): Absolutely. Yep.
Minessa: Especially somebody if you haven't thought of them in years, but like maybe you think like you think about them often, but you haven't talked to them in years because of the one lesson they taught you, like that's something that I think will have an enormous benefit because you're gonna make somebody's day better and It's something that I think no people don't do often.
Ciara Gogan (she/her): Think we're afraid, because I've started doing this as well, and I think we're afraid to be uncool or you know, too enthusiastic or whatever it might be, but it's like, God, just tell people. And like one of the things that I started doing, haven't done it enough. I've done it for a couple of people, is like, you know, when this is gonna come out all wrong, but you know, when somebody dies, right, and people are reading the obituary or they're at their funeral and they're telling stories.
Minessa: Yeah.
Ciara Gogan (she/her): Like tell the people while they're here what they mean to you. You know, don't wait
Minessa: Mm-hmm. Yes, I agree.
Ciara Gogan (she/her): until it's too late. Don't wait until they can't hear you or you don't think know that they can hear you. I'm sure that they can. But like if you have something like that that some somebody means something to you in some sort of way, even if you think they know, just tell them. Just pick up your phone, pause this, send a text, whatever. You know, just write it a little something. And I think it's like it's like the the couple of people that have done it for have been just so moved by it. It's like just do it. And don't you know, don't worry about being especially I think bless you by the way, for saying that you think that you and I are the same age. We're not, but I'm quite a bit older. But
Minessa: I said you know how old I am?
Ciara Gogan (she/her): well, didn't you say you were forty five?
Minessa: no, I'm fifty.
Ciara Gogan (she/her): there you go. You're still a lot younger than me.
Minessa: Yeah.
Ciara Gogan (she/her): Well, not a lot. Yeah, so we're in the same day. We're in the same decade. We're in the same decade. anyway, my point is, like, I think some people I certainly when we're younger, I think we're like, that's not gonna be it's not cool to do that, or they're gonna think this, they're gonna think that. For me personally, I had a hang up, and this is something that catches on me when I talk about it, so something I need to work through. But I used to have a hang up about as a queer woman telling other women how I felt about them because I was afraid that they would misconstrue it as like a romantic thing. And I don't give a shit about that anymore. Like I just don't like somebody there was a a person that we worked with years ago. Really, really sweet woman. She died r like probably two years ago now. and like she wasn't somebody that I had like, I didn't know her well. I knew her well enough to know that she was a sweet sweetheart woman and I really wish I had told her that she meant something to me that I, she was very kind, very sweet. if you needed something, was, you know, one of those people that you could always go to. and it was just she was unusual in that, you know, particular organization. And I never told her that. And went after she died, I felt really bad about it, which is sort of what started me thinking about like, I'm just gonna tell people what I think. But it also really it helped me deal in some ways with that idea, like as a as a lesbian, not telling other women how I felt about them in case they misconstrued. It's like I you know, I don't I don't worry about that anymore. And I think that there are certain things that as we get older or as we have certain experiences that sort of help us deal with those things, right?
Minessa: Mm-hmm.
Ciara Gogan (she/her): and I think part of what I want from these conversations too is to let people know if there are, you know, people that are younger listening, like Don't wait. you don't have to wait till you're, you know, forty, fifty, whatever to like to learn these lessons. Like just listen, Like we we have
Minessa: Yeah.
Ciara Gogan (she/her): we have wisdom. We do, I swear. No, and just
Minessa: I you
Ciara Gogan (she/her): like let people learn and and and undo like un unbreak some of those patterns that we a that we have, I think, that are somewhat tied to age, but don't have to be.
Minessa: I think they are tied to age actually. I feel like a lot of the younger people don't have these hangups. They actually are very, very different in terms of how they engage. I'm learning from them.
Ciara Gogan (she/her): Okay.
Minessa: I think it's mostly people who are Gen Xers, older millennials, and there's a certain age, maybe even like maybe younger millennials too. Like there might be an age aspect of it as well. But I'm finding that The younger they're and si my sister's son is actually sort of they're this generation is depressed as shit. Like they are so
Ciara Gogan (she/her): Yeah.
Minessa: depressed, like they're they are like and so it's a whole different ballgame and they're they're almost like carpe diem-ing because they feel like the world is gonna end and so they wanna do all the things that they they do. And so I'm following a lot of people who are much younger than me because they haven't had the opportunity to be conditioned into our bullshit. And so whatever it is that they're doing,
Ciara Gogan (she/her): Which is good. Yeah.
Minessa: the ones that I'm actually finding that I stick with a lot are the ones who when they talk, I can tell they haven't forgotten what they brought with them from before. Right. So whatever it is that they came wherever we come from before we're born, they haven't forgotten it yet. It's still somewhere in there. And so like, but we forget the older we get. And I think for me, my sadness is that I realize how much I've forgotten and when I 'cause I can I can trace my forgetting. And I can now
Ciara Gogan (she/her): Mm.
Minessa: I'm trying to remember, but I don't know the conduits to remember, so which is why I'm finding all these coaches to help me remember what I've forgotten. And every time I do that I think of Spock. Remember. That's not how you do a mind meld. But But I think that to your point, I want to come back to what you said about, my wife and I are in an ethically non-monogamous relationship. I don't date, but she
Ciara Gogan (she/her): Mm-hmm.
Minessa: dates a lot. And but the challenge is I'm very enthusiastic. I love you, you're amazing. And my flow coach, I remember so vividly, I saw him at Nocturnal in Providence and I walked up to I like he's this ball of energy. I posted about him before, and I'm like, you're amazing, and I just adore you, and so on. And him and I've talked a lot since then. And I s I asked him, I said to him, I said, you know, I was like, I was worried when I came up to you because I was because he was playing with light and it was having an enormous impact on me psychologically, and we've done a lot of work together since then. So like he's able to like f fuck with my brain using his light gloves, which is just very, very cool. And it helps me. It's actually very therapeutic. Like we actually like played around with a lot of fun stuff. So when I say that you can do anything, you really can do anything. You can get a guy At a club to do a light show in your eyes and it will make a difference in various ways. And so we talked about it and I I started saying in circles, I said, it doesn't matter how enthusiastic I am about you, I'm not hitting on you. Doesn't matter if you ever think I'm hitting on you, you're you're you're wrong. And what's funny though is that him and I talked and him and we're both autistic at ADHD, and he was just like, he's like, no, he's like your vibe just didn't seem he's like, people will usually come at you a certain way.
Ciara Gogan (she/her): Yeah.
Minessa: Right. And he's like, you just you weren't asking the questions that somebody asks when like because I was like the thing I didn't want was for you to think I was hitting on you because I really wanted you to teach me. Right. And so like I was like, I can't deal with this conversation that we're gonna have if you think I'm hitting on you. And I was like, but I have to talk to him because I need this guy to teach me. And I had a giant life-changing experience because of that, because of what I learned. And so to your point, like think about how you doing that has changed your life. Right now you have the bravery to do that, you change other people's lives. Because you're messaging them. And so I think for people like us who are older who we've been conditioned into every single thing that you do is wrong. Every you have to second guess every single thing you do. That's
Ciara Gogan (she/her): true. Yeah.
Minessa: that's the thing we have to let go of, right? Is that not everything we do is wrong. And just because somebody says something is uncool doesn't make it uncool. Right? Like I'm I'm 50 years old. Like I decide what cool is for me at this point. I'm gonna be dead in 30 years. Like I decide what's
Ciara Gogan (she/her): Right.
Minessa: cool for me, you know? And so, But it's very difficult to let go of that because if we do, so let's say you do that and I'm like, God, Ciara you're such a loser, right? Now you've been rejected by the community. What does that mean? That means you're going to be abandoned. You have no money, no home, we go to homeless. Right. And so it's such a deep, deep-seated fear of rejection. And our society has cultivated that and we perpetuate it constantly. And so I think it's helpful to find people that you feel safe with so that you feel safe going to people who aren't like You could message that rando, not knowing how they're gonna respond, but you feel safe doing it because you have this group here that's your core group of people, and they're the ones you care about. They're I don't care what that guy thinks of me, right? But that's such a hard thing to get to because before I cared about what everybody thought of me. It didn't matter who you were met you five minutes ago and you hate me. My life is devastated. I cannot believe that, right? I'm like, you don't
Ciara Gogan (she/her): Right I know it was wrong with us, but but like sure. Yeah.
Minessa: even know me, but you hate me. You're also a horrible racist, but you hate me, right? Like There was a time where I wanted acceptance even from that. And and so now where I'm at is I'm able to be more discerning about who I w like, it's okay for you to hate me if you're a racist. Like I'm okay with this. Please, please hate me. I'm brown, if that helps.
Ciara Gogan (she/her): Right. Yeah, please please please hate me if you're a racist. Like yeah. Yeah, exactly. God. So I wanted to talk a little bit about creativity, right? 'Cause I know that you've talked about, in in different circles that you're, you know, creative person. So I used to think of myself as very much not creative. Like decidedly not creative. When I was in school, I did art. I wasn't terrible at it. I was alright, actually pretty good in some areas. But my sisters were so much better. So of course then I like, oh my God like I'm not gonna do that 'cause they're better than that. If I can't be the best, I'm not gonna do it. Hang-ups, therapy. but but anyway, so I took down like went down a scientific track. But I, you know, I conflated in my mind artistic with creative. Like so, and so I think cre creativity is so much bigger than than artistic. and I I'm sort of coming around on that and recently, you know, allowing myself to think of myself as actually maybe I am artistic, I have some artistic leanings. somebody an artist that I admire greatly, recently had said to me that you you know, yes, you are an artist. I'm like, okay, so I'm still not over that yet. Anyway. but you can you tell me about like how creativity shows up in your life and what it teaches you?
Minessa: First, I want to tell you that everything you described about your history with art and creativity is my experience with art and creativity.
Ciara Gogan (she/her): Hmm.
Minessa: So I used to say I have the soul of an artist, but none of the talent.
Ciara Gogan (she/her): Yeah.
Minessa: And so you are an artist. Like, so that's it's you get to claim your identity. And I think where the weirdly where I got that from was I never thought I was brown or white enough, and I was looking for someone else to validate my brownness.
Ciara Gogan (she/her): Mm.
Minessa: and I but at a certain point I stopped caring about the whiteness, and I was like, But and that's actually part of my decolonization work is to bring my whiteness back in, because not whiteness in terms of like whiteness, but in terms of my Irish ancestry, my Scottish ancestry, that kind of thing, right?
Ciara Gogan (she/her): Mm-hmm. Yeah.
Minessa: So, but the stories you tell, whatever story you tell, that's the truth. It literally doesn't matter what story you tell. So you are an artist. and I so cre I did so I didn't think I had creativity, I didn't think I had much talent. My self-esteem has been very poor for a very, very long time.
Ciara Gogan (she/her): Hmm.
Minessa: where like all of this kind of stops in twenty eighteen because that's sort of when the journey of healing began. So like it's so anything I say is sort of like what I claimed as my identity for many, many, many, many years. I think that the reason why I didn't like to claim that, so the first thing where it showed up was creativity in acceptance, right? So like I had to accept that It was possible for me to be creative, for me to have value, for me to have worth. And I had such feelings of worthlessness that if I was able to create art, then that's valuable. And it fights with my idea that I'm not valuable. Right. And
Ciara Gogan (she/her): Mm.
Minessa: so, like, there's a lot of cognitive dissonance that goes in that. So, like, for me, if you were to say that my podcast that I created was creative, I wouldn't say that at all at the time. I would just say, it's just a podcast. I just made videos to help people, right? Okay. Then that's you're right. You are not creative because that's what I said, right? And it's like, so I don't believe it, so it's not. It's only over the last few years, like I really like this difference between artistic and creative. I'm gonna journal on this because I've never thought of it that way. So I'm I'm actually trying to be more mindful about how I use each of the words now because I I never thought of it that way before. And I am a creative problem solver. So
Ciara Gogan (she/her): Mm-hmm. Time.
Minessa: I the way that it shows up for me is that. I was a coach for a while where I was a marketing coach. And the more people that came to me, the more I realized that marketing was too small for me. And then I felt like I had to learn everything and teach everybody everything. And then I baaa and then I was like, okay, we gotta this is rethink everything, right? Because that story you tell where you gotta do all the things because I can't send them to someone. It was whole I was so bought into all the bullshit. And then and then it's fine. Dude, laugh at it. This is like you
Ciara Gogan (she/her): I'm laughing because same. By way, I'm not laughing at you, I'm laughing because it's like I'm the exact same way. Okay. Right.
Minessa: We're all that way. Like it's and I have to be able to laugh at it. Cause like otherwise, like there's judgment, there's other things. It's it comes from a place of love with myself, right? Like I get it, you know, here, I love you, Minessa. You're adorable. Let me pat your head, but no. So so then I realized that's when the podcast started, right? So now I start doing the podcast. And I realized that. If I'm a research administrator solving crises for these big organizations that have giant research portfolios navigating complicated policies, guidelines, also personalities, varying levels of authority and screaming and yelling, you know, how much they like to scream and yell, and also companies that are trying to exist solely on research grants and helping them stay out of NIH jail and helping to, you know, all of those things require the ability to be extremely mentally dexterous. And and so for me, I think getting some more neuroplasticity helped a lot. So that showed that so once I started to realize that I was doing this even though I wasn't drawing, and if anybody's seen my art, my art's really fucking good. It is so good. It's adorable, it's bright, it's colorful, it'll make you laugh. I love my art, but it's only in the last two to three years. So I got myself an iPad. And I realized that that made it easier for me to draw because it kind of allowed me to work within the way I work. I used to use Photoshop before and I was able to do a limited amount. So I really, really love Procreate. I love drawing. I found that I don't I'm not currently making time for it because something in the last few weeks I've realized is that going back to capitalism. So even though I know all these things, this is actually super important. Even though I know these things, I backslide. We all will backslide because the systems exist. So in the
Ciara Gogan (she/her): Yeah.
Minessa: about three weeks ago I realized I was feeling like so wound up, like so. And I I ended up having to recognize that the reason why I was was because I was making choices to continue to work long after the hour that I was done. I was making choices to put my attention in certain places, and that was training my mind to think that that was what was important. And so
Ciara Gogan (she/her): Yeah.
Minessa: I've had to really work on that in the last couple of weeks and take the like so I'm working on that right now. So it shows up in that it helps me. So going back to like processing without a therapist, art is an enormously helpful processing. I hate cooking, so I don't bring creativity to the kitchen at all. But my house
Ciara Gogan (she/her): Mm-hmm.
Minessa: is like it looks like a color bomb dropped all over it and a chotchki store, right? And like so it shows up in many different areas of
Ciara Gogan (she/her): Yeah.
Minessa: the plants outside. But I think it's a matter of being okay with following the thread and not trying to be right is what's important to be creative. Because if you're like, I have to do this right, I have to draw this eye correctly, I have to do it this way,
Ciara Gogan (she/her): Right.
Minessa: then you're gonna you're there's no creativity that can happen. Creativity, you have to give yourself the freedom to disconnect from the idea of right and wrong. Right?
Ciara Gogan (she/her): Yeah. Yeah.
Minessa: And it don't mean you go murder people to be creative, like don't do that, right? Don't
Ciara Gogan (she/her): Right. No, no, I know what you mean though. Like it it like don't go for precision, don't go for exact, like just flow and just enjoy the process.
Minessa: And Don't create it for an audience that doesn't exist, right? Because like sometimes I'm writing and I'm imagining the person reading it and they're saying horrible things. I'm writing or drawing and I'm drawing it and I'm imagining the person who's looking at God, that's so stupid. You think that's pink, right? It's like there
Ciara Gogan (she/her): yeah.
Minessa: is no one here, right? And so don't
Ciara Gogan (she/her): Right.
Minessa: tell that person to go the go the fuck away. Don't be mean to that person because that person is a child within you who is hurting and who is used to being rejected. So the way to handle that is to say, I think people will really love it. And why don't we play together a little bit? And then we can put it away and we don't have to show it to anybody. Show gentleness. I talk about this in a lot of my podcasts. Is when you start showing gentleness in those moments, you will actually find that it's easier to move through. Like if you brace, oh God, have you ever had a really deep massage, like a super deep massage? If
Ciara Gogan (she/her): Mm.
Minessa: you breathe into it and loosen up, they're gonna be able to get
Ciara Gogan (she/her): Yeah.
Minessa: so deep. But if you tighten, they're
Ciara Gogan (she/her): Right.
Minessa: only gonna get so far. So you actually have to lean into it, which is very uncomfortable because we are conditioned as a society to Avoid discomfort at all costs.
Ciara Gogan (she/her): Mm-hmm. True. True, true, true. what lessons do you think you're still learning? I know you've touched on this a little bit, but is there anything
Minessa: Jesus.
Ciara Gogan (she/her): like that you didn't like touch on that you think is still
Minessa: Okay. This is the lesson. This is the lesson I'm learning. I learn it every day. I don't think I'll ever stop learning this lesson. This is a true lesson for all of us. Everything is okay. You have everything you need. You have everything you need. And you'll be able to find what you'll be able to get directed to what you don't need. be careful what you say out loud, because the words
Ciara Gogan (she/her): Yeah.
Minessa: you say out loud are literal spells. Like this is gonna break your brain, but we are living in a world of magic. You
Ciara Gogan (she/her): Mm-hmm.
Minessa: can make anything you want happen, but you have to say the words and you have to be specific and you have to say it a lot until you believe it. It is the science behind affirmations. There's a lot of stuff that goes there's a lot of like quantum shit that I've been and this is just like this is my theory, my I'm a baby in this, but I've seen it work enough and I've
Ciara Gogan (she/her): Yeah.
Minessa: seen enough things to be like, all right, I'm with you on this, and until I can like until I see it not work. And I think that that's one of the things that's helped me to get through all of the traumas, everything when you're struggling, when you're dealing with it, is the the knowledge that people love you. You're okay. You will be okay. Eventually, and I know this isn't gonna make anybody feel better, but eventually we're all gonna die. Like that's it. We're just all gonna die. And if you but nobody really believes that. But if you really think that eventually you're all gonna die, does it really matter what that guy you passed on the street thinks of you? Right? Like, does it and like it really and I don't think it's really hard to do? So that's the lesson that I'm doing every day because we are by our conditioning connected to the meat suit. We are by conditioning. And like by nature, like there's nothing we can really do about it. That is the journey, right? And so recognizing that we can both exist in a plane where we have this bigger space that everything is gonna be okay. When you're dead, literally everything's gonna be okay, right?
Ciara Gogan (she/her): Right.
Minessa: But we can have the power to craft the life we want now. There are people who are held back by systems of oppression. And like, and for
Ciara Gogan (she/her): Absolutely.
Minessa: those, and I think it's important to recognize where you have privilege and where you don't, and the creativity of problem solving in that space. Is what allows you to find your way out. That's how and and people like me, not just me, many people are working with organizations and institutions to help create pathways and tributaries. So the more you say what you want out loud, the more the universe knows what to send you. And it may not be from me, but you'll hear it eventually, maybe in six months, maybe in seven months. And that's the person who's gonna change your life. But if you don't say it out loud and you're not clear, Then the universe doesn't know what to send you. Or if you say things like, I'm not this or I'm not that, the universe isn't gonna send you that because it's not that's not what's real.
Ciara Gogan (she/her): Right. Like when I said I have no income right now, you were like fucking shut up. Don't say that. I saw it. I saw it in your face. You didn't say anything, but I saw it in your face, you're like
Minessa: I was like, don't don't say that. Don't say
Ciara Gogan (she/her): Do that.
Minessa: Well, you're so what you want to say is I have income coming. I have seeds
Ciara Gogan (she/her): Right.
Minessa: planted. I and I think I have and or you could like there are ways to say it, because currently you're right. Right now you don't have income coming in. So like it takes a while
Ciara Gogan (she/her): Yeah. Right, right, right. But yes.
Minessa: to figure out what the true statement is for you
Ciara Gogan (she/her): Yeah.
Minessa: that'll allow you to both acknowledge your current state, but also create the future state.
Ciara Gogan (she/her): Right. Yeah.
Minessa: That you want, right? And I don't know what is for you. Like it's hard. Sometimes I work with Chat GPT on it, because I don't
Ciara Gogan (she/her): Yeah.
Minessa: want to say the wrong thing out loud. My sister and I have made really big fucking mistakes saying the wrong thing out loud. We ended up having we there was this one guy. We were both madly in love with him. He was so hot. And his name was Silas. And we both said we wish Silas liked us and we just wanted him
Ciara Gogan (she/her): Mm.
Minessa: to be friends with us. That's not what happened. He fell in love with my sister. She fell in love with him. Our relationship completely broke apart when we were in college. Like it was a
Ciara Gogan (she/her): Yeah.
Minessa: whole drama. And you know why? Because we were not fucking specific.
Ciara Gogan (she/her): Yeah.
Minessa: I learned that lesson when I was twenty three years old. Silas. That was a that
Ciara Gogan (she/her): right? No, I know. I gotta fig dah I know.
Minessa: was we that was Saira and I still talk about that.
Ciara Gogan (she/her): That's hilarious. So I just wanted to actually quickly, 'cause you said, you know, that in twenty eighteen, like, you broke up, you left the cult and you broke up with your sister, but you're you're back in relation with your sister now. Like, yeah.
Minessa: Yeah, yeah, absolutely. So the the yes. So I was afraid, but but we had to grow separately. she and I were both in extremely dark places, and what had happened was, and I recognized it was happening, which is why she broke up with that's funny to say that, but she broke up with me, but I was the one that was recognized it was happening. And what was happening was that we were feeding into each other and now just constantly we were creating a deeper and deeper well of trauma, and it was we were not helping each other. And so I we separated and then she and then it took a while, like it's two to three years for us to kind of one year for one year we just didn't even talk. You know, that was a time where we actually a couple of years later we then discovered a giant trauma of like a whole lot of stuff about my dad that was like awful. And it made our relationship, but it allowed us to then break through our codependence issues and really talk about the brass tacks because now once my dad was cut off. we were able to talk about everything more really in our whole lives. Whereas before she and my brother were still hanging out with my dad and I was like kind of done. So like
Ciara Gogan (she/her): Yeah, yeah.
Minessa: we had to grow in separate spaces. And the reason why that's important is because we tend to think of things as breakups or things like that as permanent. We don't realize that like very important people can come in and out of your life. And like my aunt, for example, we haven't talked in many, many years, but when I go see Our Lady Peace, I'm staying with her because our relationship is rekindling and she's one of the most important people in my life. But we were in a time, a season where we needed to be separate. It is not You said something about this earlier. It's not a bad thing for a relationship to either run its course or for a relationship to have seasons. And again, in our society, I feel like I'm dri I'm I'm railing on our society a lot, but it just goes to show you how many things that are really conditioning us. That if you become friends with someone, it has to be friends forever, or else you failed. If you get married, you have to be married forever, or else you failed. Like There is only forever or failing. And if you put yourself in that binary, you will feel like a failure all the time because that's not
Ciara Gogan (she/her): Yep. All the time. Yeah.
Minessa: how life works. Right. And so, like,
Ciara Gogan (she/her): Absolutely.
Minessa: how are we creating our own struggles with our expectations and our belief systems? And you can free yourself, and I can free my, we all can, by simply challenging the rule in the first place. Like, why is that even a rule? Why is that even a
Ciara Gogan (she/her): Yeah.
Minessa: thing? So if someone says don't wear that, be like, why not? Why is that a rule? I love that, it's my favorite thing.
Ciara Gogan (she/her): I love that. I think that's an awesome place to end because time and you have to go and Yeah.
Minessa: Time. This is so fun and I like I really appr I appreciate your grace and I really love this conversation. Like I learned so much today. I'm gonna be journaling about this and marinating. This you're a great host. Like really you are a
Ciara Gogan (she/her): Good. Awesome. Thank you.
Minessa: much better host than I ever was. Like you're really good. I you're gonna do well with Yeah.
Ciara Gogan (she/her): Thank you. I appreciate that. Tell tell everybody. No, I appreciate that. thank you for being here. I really, really, really appreciate your time and your all of your thoughts and your wisdoms and all of the things. I really can't wait for people to start to hear this conversation.
Minessa: That was a great card. I'm really excited. Thank you so much. It was it was so much fun. And I am really like, I can't wait to tell other people about your podcast. Like, it's this is like this is great. So and also thank you because like you're you said something you can you you said a couple times. I just want to give this to as like a friend. you said I hope so.
Ciara Gogan (she/her): Mm-hmm.
Minessa: You are. I want to invite you to change the language to I am doing that because you just in the and I and how I can prove that is because it just happened. Like right on this call, you had a giant impact on me, I have a lot of things that I need that I'm gonna be thinking about that will inform me as the days and years go ahead. And so even if it's just me, which I know it's not, but even if it's just me, you are now you can use that. So 'cause I want you to believe it and like it 'cause it's true. Awesome. Thank you so much. I will I'm looking forward to it.
Ciara Gogan (she/her): Thank you. Awesome. Thanks, Minessa.
